“More writing than welding” August 1, 2008: I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a thing about Philip Levine’s “poetry eternal.” I don’t even know what I’m going to have today for lunch (aka, “all this temporal crap”). Now the order for how the condiments go on a Wendy’s hamburger (mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, onions, tomato, lettuce, mustard), that I know. [...] by Mark Nowak

On Bill Griffiths, Skeptical Militancy, & “Ghost Town” July 29, 2008: Back in the early 1980s in the anathema that was Reagan-era Buffalo, “Ghost Town” was as close as it got to our anthem. “This town… is coming like a ghost town… All the clubs have been closed down…” Little did I know then that, across the pond, Bill Griffiths (who I’ve mentioned here before at Harriet in “Poetics (Mine)”) was [...] by Mark Nowak

Rethinking Working-Class Literature July 25, 2008: Sonali Perera, an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers, has published an engaging new essay in this year’s first issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies that dovetails in unique and productive ways with much of what I’ve been writing here for Harriet the past two months. “Rethinking Working-Class Literature: [...] by Mark Nowak

Samadoon July 20, 2008: the ratatat and bomb booming .....calls for the lost compliantly igniting troubles and provocation my bull elephant people sheltering .....engaged ever betrothed to mucus and weakness .....of all diseases malaria tuberculosis they’re led astray by killing’s admirers son of Barre and his lot in ignorance following [...] by Mark Nowak

Chimurenga July 19, 2008: Very few literary magazines get me excited when they arrive in the mail. As has probably become more than evident to those reading my blog posts the past six weeks, I’m seeking something decidedly different than many USAmerican poetry journals regularly provide when I crack the spine of that pefect-bound or saddle-stitched or stapled paper [...] by Mark Nowak

Forage July 17, 2008: Several weeks ago in my post on the symposium celebrating the work of poet, editor, scholar, and Japanese-Canadian internment activist Roy Miki, I mentioned that a new book by Rita Wong, Forage, had been awarded the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for the best book by a writer from British Columbia or the Yukon. Since then I’ve been able to [...] by Mark Nowak

Canon Fodder July 15, 2008: Several people have e-mailed me recently to ask where I come across the poems and poets of social movements and organized labor that I’ve been discussing here during my interlude upon Harriet, as well as why these poems and their presumed dubious “aesthetic quality” should matter. Yesterday, as part of another project I’m working on, I [...] by Mark Nowak

Poetics (Mine) July 13, 2008: I’ve spent more than a decade researching the global extractive industries, in part for a project on the I.W.W.-led 1916 Mesabi Miners’ Strike in northern Minnesota’s Iron Range; in part for a new collaborative book (with Beijing-based photographer Ian Teh) forthcoming early next year from Coffee House Press—Coal Mountain Elementary—on [...] by Mark Nowak

Left of Karl Marx (Part II) July 10, 2008: “On the left is a black woman, determined to articulate political and ideological positions that would contest the boundaries of freedom of speech as defined by American bourgeois democracy. These boundaries, while ostensibly ‘real’ rights such as freedom of the press and habeas corpus nonetheless carry limitations, which keep the [...] by Mark Nowak

Left of Karl Marx (Part I) July 9, 2008: As has probably become more than evident to anyone reading my entries thus far on Harriet, I’m interested simultaneously in both Poetry and poetry—that upper case canonized (MLA-ized, Norton-ized, Super-sized!) beast as well as its lower case comrade which I’ll loosely categorize (with a change of preposition) by June Jordan’s phrase [...] by Mark Nowak